Ballooning debt leaves a horrible legacy for our children

November 26, 2007

Congratulations America, the national debt has cracked the $9 trillion mark and your share of the debt has now cracked $30,000. And you thought the only big ticket items out there you had to pay for were your mortgage and car loan.

What's the national debt, you ask?

It's debt owed by the federal government, made up mostly of debt obligations such as Treasury bills, Treasury notes and Treasury bonds.

The new national debt total, as of Nov. 13, is $9,118,453,489,035. It rose in a month by $61,488,739,667. That's billions, folks.

And who's buying all those bills, notes and bonds that are keeping our federal government afloat? About 40 percent is owned by the Federal Reserve Bank, so basically government owes it to government. Foreign financial institutions, mostly Asian, own about 23 percent.

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With the dollar being pummeled around the world - the Euro was trading at $1.49 midweek, and we're even with the Canadian dollar (remember when $1 U.S. was worth $1.50 Canadian, and shopping and visiting Canada was a steal) - how wise is it to keep increasing our debt?

You can land the blame for this mess on Congress, where spending just keep giving and giving to the folks back home. And that's over and above the ongoing expense of keeping our forces in Afghanistan and Iraq (for the record, the president is asking for $196 billion, the House offered up $50 billion but Senate Republicans filibustered it to death).

And you can blame the White House, where President Bush pushes the $196 billion plan, while maintaining that taxes don't need to go up to help pay for the war effort.

Republicans seemed locked in a dream world where trillions of dollars are being spent yet revenues to pay for those programs and personnel are not provided.

For those of the Republican ilk who continue to maintain that Americans are better off with lower taxes so they can make their own financial decisions, here's a gut check: Someday, someone is going to have to pay off that debt. That someone is the country's taxpayers, who not only will have to pay off the debt but the interest that goes along with it.

What kind of logic is that?

If it's not the current taxpayers it will be their children, and at the rate we're going our grandchildren as well.

Let's face it, the country's had a free financial ride in the military efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan so far. There has been no "sacrifice" on the homefront that was the hallmark of World War II. There has been no draft to pull military personnel from every corner of the country and households top to bottom. There's been no Victory Bond sales and clothing drives. There's no hint of raising taxes to pay for the war.

So in short, we pay our overworked and under fire troops with money backed by China and Japan, and not American taxes.

A sad commentary on keeping our financial house in order.

Kendall P. Stanley is News-Review editor. His column appears Monday on the Opinion Page. He can be contacted at 439-9349, or kstanley@petoskeynews.com.